For this week’s episode of Part-Time Characters, the friends get together to discuss their favorite movies based on books. With so many book adaptations, it was hard to whittle down the list. Just ask Sam.
However, we managed to get it done and bring you a diverse list- from young adult books, to horror adaptations and romantic historical dramas (cue Bridget’s extended sigh).
It should be noted we all made hilarious grammatical mistakes and confused some titles and authors’ names. By all of us, I mean all of us except Bridget, of course. Some were corrected. Others went by unnoticed until this was edited. Enjoy our mistakes.
Question of the Week: What is your favorite book to film adaptation?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments and Sam will read them next week. You can also send us your thoughts to our email parttimecharacters[at]gmail[dot]com. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook so you can send us direct messages and get podcast updates.
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This Week’s Cast: Maria Garcia, Bridget Serdock, Sam Noland and Jenny Pan
MUSIC
Great Days by Joakim Karud
when it comes to book about movies some are actually an imrovement over the book! According to my opinion a few of those are The Godfather, The Last of the Mohicans, The Silence of the Lambs and the 1950 version of Moby Dick! Honestly… Moby Dick and Anna Karenina are among the most boring books I’ve ever read!
Most classic novels have plenty of adaptations over the years but almost always there’s one or two that stands out over the rest! So if you haven’t seen them I would highly recommend to watch Disney’s version of Treasure Island from 1950 with Robert Newton and Bobby Driscoll, Luis Bunuel’s adaptation of Robinson Crusoe and The Adventures of Huck Finn with Elijah Wood!
Some of my other favorite book adaptations are The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Coppola’s adaptation), Interview with the Vampire to Kill a Mockingbird and Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist
Oh… Just realized that i made a mistake I ment to write book adaptations, not book about movies!
Oh, that’s easy—Shrek! (For those who don’t know, yes, it was in fact a book)
Fun fact, based on the top 1,000 movies from 2005-2015, only 39% of movies are original. That means that 61% of movies are adaptions from books and short stories, remakes, sequels, or spin-offs. Adaptions also have a 30% larger budget than originals and are more likely to be a top grossing movie. The more you know.
That being said, in my opinion when comparing books to movies 99% of the time the book is always better. With that in mind, a few movies that come close to the greatness of the books are 5. Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix), 4. Les Miserable, 3. The Da Vinci Code, 2. Life of Pi, and the only movie that has ever surpassed the book that I know of is ‘Mockingjay’ from ‘The Hunger Games’ trilogy. Not because this was the greatest of greatest movies, but because I hated the book so much. The first 200 pages were so boring, but when they made it into a movie I was kept engaged and entertained. They even split it up into two parts and kept the plot moving and explained much more than the book ever could. That’s the secret to making a movie that surpasses a book, you just choose a terrible book.
P.S. My sister forced me to watch ‘eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’ and it was a terrible movie. I hope Bridget hates it too.
I think most people hated Mockingjay, but I feel splitting the last of a series into two parts is a gamble. Like, Harry Potter did it decently (still think Part 1 of Deathly Hallows was a bit of a drag), but other YA adaptations? Does anyone else remember Twilight or was that a fever dream. And Allegiant?? Whyyy
The Never Ending Story is one of my favourite book to movie adaptations (which wrecked me as child and continues to wreck me as an adult), as well as One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest which was a reading assignment, Bridget. So I’m not sure if that says more about me or more about the book and movie.
The Series of Unfortunate Events show on Netflix was a pretty great adaptation! It really had the same style and feel that the books did. The Patrick Warbuton was the PERFECT choice for Lemony Snicket. It is either that show or The Martian as my favorite Book to Movie/Show adaptation. I haven’t seen or read Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl yet. Do you guys recommend it? As for Sam making a Game of Thrones guest appearance, I think that would be a great idea! I don’t watch GoT, but I still listen to the episodes (I’m not really sure why). I think it would be fun to listen to a GoT outsider’s opinion on watching an episode. Wait wait wait, hold up… SAM HASN’T SEEN THE GOONIES???????
Are we sticking to traditional books or do graphic novels counts as well because I love Scott pilgrim more than I can say
I’ve read a lot, maybe not as fast as a mutual friend of Maria and I, but quite a bit, so I’ll only speak on things I’ve read. However, I’m confused, are we talking best adaptations or best movies based on books? Because those can be two different things. Like classic examples are The Shining, First Blood, Jaws, Forrest Gump which were way different and bad as adaptations, but are terrific movies.
Also, I’m not even sure how to define best adaptations. Like is it better to take something small and make it better by adding more like Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, or 300? Or is is better to be as close the material as possible like Sin City, Silence of the Lambs or Green Mile? Or is it better to take a hard adaptation that has a lot of details and cut the fat and keep the complete essence and come out better like Lord of the Rings? Hard to define for me.
And I definitely wouldn’t call Game of Thrones a great adaptation, well I would for season 1, that was great, not top tier, but great. Season 2 started doing silly stuff. Season 3 & 4 were generally good adaptations too, those there were still plenty of issues. Season 5, okay they just stopped trying to be a good adaptation and went full “we do our TV thing now” here other than a few spots. They don’t even get the essence anymore as ASOIAF was something where choices and actions all had consequences and no character was safe from them, now we have characters that can murder whole families (even if there were 10% innocents) and be totally cool and smiles and heroic after, with no consequences, similar things happen a lot like feeding a possibly innocent person to dragons, etc…. Another thing, they changed the name to Game of Thrones and then proceeded to cut the plots of the four true players of the game of thrones. Yeah, not good.
Not sure how anyone could read Year One, A Lonely Place of Dying, Dark Knight Returns and Knightfall, and think the Nolan trilogy is a good adaptation. Burton was even more out there. That was good (well the 1989 one) but it was more like Batman guesting in a Tim Burton movie than Tim Burton trying to make Batman.
And man, Bridget says I just try and argue, yet here she is through all kinds of immediate shade at Jane Austen. I’m not into romance or silly love songs (yeah John was better and right about Paul), but even I’ll admit Austen had some good writing chops, her books were good. Better with zombies, but still good on their own.